Running for Roman Consul

As I alluded to in my initial post, I am part way up a ladder on my career, beating my head repeatedly on an invisible ceiling. There are various reasons for this: in stark contrast to my world-view, my institution has deep anxiety issues in a perceived winner-take-all national competition, and has extremely myopic views on how to win; the institution and possibly the entire sector is in a contraction phase; and the entire sector has the most risk-averse profile of anything I've known or studied. I was also recently startled to hear the perspective on the matter of a good overseas professional friend who had visited and met with a number of higher-ups 18 months ago: even as I natively speak the language, and I've held the passport for five years, the cultural and professional jingoism is such that my opportunity as a "foreigner" is limited. Maybe I'm considered a flight risk. Ironically, I've never had plans to leave, but the persistent lack of respect has pushed me to reconsider.

And so while most of my grad-school mates have proceeded through a normal career progression back "home", I have spun my wheels here, year-after-year, chasing the sliding goal-posts.

I recently read a book called Rome's Last Citizen [Amazon, Book Depository], a biography on Cato the Younger. I was initially attracted to it by a description of Cato as one of the most prominent of Stoics. I was raised as a Mennonite in the U.S, and Stoicism seemed to share a similar doctrine, but without the theological underpinnings. I found the book fascinating, and will probably dedicate a whole post to it at some stage, but most poignant in my headspace with regard to my career was the timeline through the core of the book. Republican Rome was ruled by a pair of Consuls, and while they did not wield absolute power, these posts were the top political positions, and they definitely set the pace for who could get away with what. Intriguingly, the term of Consul only lasted one year. So through the mid half-century or so B.C., upon which the book focusses, major events, indeed history itself, evolved every year.

Over 2000 years later, with infinitely more information at my fingertips and infinitely more technical know-how, how is my history evolving year-by-year? It's not. I'm in the same place today as I was five, ten years ago. After spending the vast majority of my waking hours throughout that time on this job, allowing myself to become more and more specialised, I feel pretty burned. And burned-out. I wake up every morning knowing I need to quit.

I grew up in a family that ran its own business. We were in control, and made all the decisions that determined our destiny, for better or worse -- almost always better. In contrast, one of my graduate school confidants grew up in communist Czechoslovakia, and his father worked in the transportation department. I believe it is more than coincidence that this colleague is an exemplar of the even keel; he can be halfway up the hill down which the shit is flowing, but he shrugs it off and continues on his merry way. He now has a permanent and very secure position at a very good institution in the States. I, on the other hand can no longer abide working for the man, particularly when that man is not a man, but an entrenched bureaucracy.

While I'm still looking for which stars are aligned and pointing me in what direction, I'm quite certain that I will be spending my time very differently in the near future. Certainly the design principles of my career-remodelling project will include an avoidance of over-specialisation, and, if I can help it, working for myself. Curiously, I remember putting a bit of a deadline on myself a few years ago; I recall feeling that 42 or 43 would be the limit of my patience. I don't know that that alone would govern my movements now, but it's interesting that that is how it's working out.

© 2013 J. Gaümann